Smart women, sophisticated ladies, savvy writers . . . Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Lois Long, Jessie Fauset, Dawn Powell, Mary McCarthy, and others imagined New York as a place where they could claim professional status, define urban independence, and shrug off confining feminine roles. It might be said that during the 1920s and 1930s these literary artists painted the town red on the pages of magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Playing Smart, Catherine Keyser's homage to their literary genius, is a captivating celebration of their causes and careers.

Through humor writing, this "smart set" expressed both sides of the story-promoting their urbanity and wit while using irony and caricature to challenge feminine stereotypes. Their fiction raised questions about what it meant to be a woman in the public eye, how gender roles would change because men and women were working together, and how the growth of the magazine industry would affect women's relationships to their bodies and minds. Keyser provides a refreshing and informative chronicle, saluting the value of being "smart" as incisive and innovative humor showed off the wit and talent of women writers and satirized the fantasy world created by magazines.

The role of the fool is to provoke the powerful to question their convictions, preferably while avoiding a beating. Fools accomplish this not by hectoring their audience, but by broaching sensitive topics indirectly, often disguising their message in a joke or a tale. Writers and thinkers throughout history have adopted the fool’s approach, and here Ralph Lerner turns to six of them—Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Gibbon—to elucidate the strategies these men employed to persuade the heedless, the zealous, and the overly confident to pause and reconsider.

As Playing the Fool makes plain, all these men lived through periods marked by fanaticism, particularly with regard to religion and its relation to the state. In such a troubled context, advocating on behalf of skepticism and against tyranny could easily lead to censure, or even, as in More’s case, execution. And so, Lerner reveals, these serious thinkers relied on humor to move their readers toward a more reasoned understanding of the world and our place in it. At once erudite and entertaining, Playing the Fool is an eloquently thought-provoking look at the lives and writings of these masterly authors.

2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

With over forty years of experience as a sought after diagnostician, Dr. Stuart Mushlin has cracked his share of medical mysteries, ones in which there are bigger gambles than playing the ponies at the track. Some of his patients show up with puzzling symptoms, calling for savvy medical detective work. Others seem to present cut-and-dry cases, but they turn out to be suffering from rare or serious conditions.
 
In Playing the Ponies and Other Medical Mysteries Solved, Dr. Mushlin shares some of the most intriguing cases he has encountered, revealing the twists and turns of each patient’s diagnosis and treatment process. Along the way, he imparts the secrets to his success as a medical detective—not specialized high-tech equipment, but time-honored techniques like closely observing, touching, and listening to patients. He also candidly describes cases where he got things wrong, providing readers with honest insights into both the joys and dilemmas of his job.   
 
Dr. Mushlin does not just treat diseases; he treats people. And this is not just a book about the ailments he diagnosed; it is also about the scared, uncertain, ailing individuals he helped in the process. Filled with real-life medical stories you’ll have to read to believe, Playing the Ponies is both a suspenseful page-turner and a heartfelt reflection on a life spent caring for patients. 

"Scrupulously researched, critically acute, and written with care, Playing Underground will become a classic account of an era of hard-won free expression."
-William Coco

"At last---a book documenting the beginnings of Off-Off Broadway theater. Playing Underground is an insightful, illuminating, and honest appraisal of this important period in American theater."
-Rosalyn Drexler, author of Art Does (Not!) Exist and Occupational Hazard

"An epic movie of an epic movement, Playing Underground is a book the world has waited for without knowing it. How precisely it captures the evolution of our revolution! I am amazed by the book's scope and scale, and I bless its author especially for giving two greats, Paul Foster and H. M. Koutoukas, their proper, polar places, and for memorializing such unjustly forgotten masterpieces as Irene Fornes's Molly's Dream and Jeff Weiss's A Funny Walk Home. Stephen Bottoms's vivid evocation of the grand adventure of Off-Off Broadway has woken and broken my heart. It is difficult to believe that he was not there alongside me to breathe the caffeine-nicotine-alkaloid-steeped air."
-Robert Patrick, author of Kennedy's Children and Temple Slave


Few books address the legendary age of 1960s off-off Broadway theater. Fortunately, Stephen Bottoms fills that gap with Playing Underground---the first comprehensive history of the roots of off-off Broadway.

This is a theater whose legacy is still felt today: it was the launching pad for many leading contemporary theater artists, including Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, and others, and it was a pivotal influence on improv comedy and shows like Saturday Night Live.

Off-off Broadway groups such as the Living Theatre, La Mama, and Caffe Cino captured the spirit of nontraditional theater with their edgy, unscripted, boundary-crossing subjects. Yet, as Bottoms discovers, there is no one set of truths about off-off Broadway to uncover; the entire scene was always more a matter of competing perceptions than a singular, concrete reality.

No other author has managed to illuminate this shifting tableau as Bottoms does. Through interviews with dozens of the era's leading playwrights, performers, directors, and critics, he unearths a countercultural theater movement that was both influential and transforming-yet ephemeral and quintessentially of its moment.

Playing Underground will be a definitive work on the subject, offering a complete picture of an important but little-studied period in American theater.

How gaming intersects with systems like history, bodies, and code

Why do we so compulsively play video games? Might it have something to do with how gaming affects our emotions? In Playing with Feelings, scholar Aubrey Anable applies affect theory to game studies, arguing that video games let us “rehearse” feelings, states, and emotions that give new tones and textures to our everyday lives and interactions with digital devices. Rather than thinking about video games as an escape from reality, Anable demonstrates how video games—their narratives, aesthetics, and histories—have been intimately tied to our emotional landscape since the emergence of digital computers.

Looking at a wide variety of video games—including mobile games, indie games, art games, and games that have been traditionally neglected by academia—Anable expands our understanding of the ways in which these games and game studies can participate in feminist and queer interventions in digital media culture. She gives a new account of the touchscreen and intimacy with our mobile devices, asking what it means to touch and be touched by a game. She also examines how games played casually throughout the day create meaningful interludes that give us new ways of relating to work in our lives. And Anable reflects on how games allow us to feel differently about what it means to fail.

Playing with Feelings offers provocative arguments for why video games should be seen as the most significant art form of the twenty-first century and gives the humanities passionate, incisive, and daring arguments for why games matter.

According to the Yup’ik Eskimo of Alaska, fish are not to be played with. It’s an adage instilled in children that’s as basic as looking both ways before crossing the street, but at its heart lies a concern for nature. Yup’ik traditions are tested each generation by this people’s struggle for survival, the admonition not to play with fish has been further tested by the arrival of sport fishing from the south. Worlds are colliding—whose will emerge unscathed? Robert J. Wolfe, a cultural anthropologist from California, spent twenty years in Alaska documenting the traditional hunting and fishing practices of Alaska Natives. During that northern sojourn he discovered much about sustainable relationships between people and nature and about the basis of meaningful communities. In Playing with Fish he has crafted a series of thought-provoking essays on nature, culture, and the human condition that convey unsuspected lessons from the North. In contrasting California and Alaska—worlds far apart yet connected by peoples, cultural traditions, and ecology—Wolfe not only draws distinctions between compass points, he also conveys memorable stories about nature and life. He depicts bears and humans as both neighbors and ancient adversaries, and how cultural views about bears can destroy or preserve those relationships. He shows us Alaskan villages where security is found not in locks but in neighbors, unlike electronically sealed suburban California homes, their lawns studded with security signs. And he describes the peaceful resolution of conflict between California bird hunters and Eskimos of the Bering Sea coast over declining geese numbers, where small humanizing acts tipped the balance in favor of cooperation. Blending insights into subjects as diverse as music and chaos theory, Wolfe challenges readers to reflect on their own personal conduct within nature and within our multicultural world. Playing with Fish is a delightful and insightful collection of modern parables that offer a new way of looking at cultural and ecological issues, reminding us that the road between two worlds is always a two-way street.

Plays by French and Francophone Women presents eight recent plays by contemporary French and francophone women writers. The plays vary in style and form from the satirical to the poetic, from the comedic one-woman show to the potential multi-media esoteric production, and have been written by French, Qué becois, Acadian, and Caribbean francophone writers. The editors have provided informative headnotes to introduce each play, then faithful translations rendered with an ear toward production in English. A general introduction to the volume situates each work within the broader context of contemporary French-language theater by women. The volume also includes an annotated bibliography by Cynthia Running-Johnson of thirty-one additional plays by women in French.

Featured plays and playwrights are The Scent of Sulphur by S. Corinna Bille; When Fairies Thirst by Denise Boucher; Island Memories by Ina Césaire; Warmth: A Bloodsong by Chantal Chawaf; The Goddess Lar or Centuries of Women by Andrée Chedid; The Name of Oedipus: Song of the Forbidden Body by Hélène Cixous; The Table: Womenspeak by Michèle Foucher; and The Rabble by Antonine Maillet.

This is the first comprehensive play-by-play analysis of the drama of David Storey, one of the most acclaimed and innovative, sometimes controversial, writers in the British theatre since World War II. Grouping the plays according to theme, Hutchings demonstrates that the central focus in the drama of David Storey is the devaluation of traditional rituals in contemporary life and the disintegration of the family. A playwright attuned to the poetry in the ordinary, to the profundity, subtle eloquence, and dramatic tension in the mundane, Storey explores the ways people cope, or fail to cope, with complexity, with uncertainty, with constant, bewildering flux. He writes about groups—families (In Celebration, The Farm), rugby teams (The Changing Room), and construction crews (The Contractor). In his plays, individuals seek to overcome isolation and integrate themselves into a significant assemblage that transcends the self.

Hutchings notes that Storey frequently deals with working-class parents who cannot "understand their grown children’s anxieties, their discontentedness with life, their unstable marriages, and their inability to enjoy the benefits of the education and advantages they labored so hard for so many years to provide."

Storey understands and sympathizes with parents who have paid to educate their children out of their own spheres. He saw it happen in his own family, knew the disapproval of his father: "What else could my father think when, nearing sixty, he came home each day from the pit exhausted, shattered by fatigue, to find me—a young man ideally physically equipped to do the job which now left him totally prostrated—painting a picture of flowers, or writing a poem about a cloud. There was, and there is, no hope of reconciliation."

Hutchings supplements his thematic analysis of Storey’s plays by interweaving into his text 90 percent of a major interview with the playwright, the only such comprehensive interview in existence. Storey, who believes that readers "ought to be chary of all interviews," discusses alleged literary influences on his work, the current state of British theatre, and his reactions to critics. He also provides insight into various productions and performances in his work.

Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association

 

First published in 1946, The Playwright as Thinker is a classic work of drama criticism that helped create the intellectual environment in which serious American theater would thrive in the second half of the twentieth century. At the time of publishing, most drama critics believed dramatic art deserved no intellectual status; Eric Bentley set out to prove them wrong. Focusing on the canonic playwrights Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Sartre, and Brecht, Bentley viewed the playwright as thinker, and his survey of over 150 years of dramatic art provided, in essence, an intellectual history of Europe. This edition not only contains the original, long-suppressed foreword, in which Bentley lambastes the climate of Broadway at the time, but also the author's 1987 afterword.
 

Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan take us behind the scenes in conversations with thirteen of today’s most distinguished playwrights, including Tony Kushner, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, and Sarah Ruhl. To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage. 

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Four young playwrights, James Schevill, Megan Terry, Elizabeth Johnson, and Terrence McNally, are represented in this collection, which includes four one-act plays and one three-act play. The authors are writers who have participated in an experimental program at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the Office for Advanced Drama Research, of which Arthur H. Ballet is the director.

The program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research, established with the aid of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, provides an opportunity for promising young playwrights to develop their talents in a situation which offers them, among other advantages, the chance to have their plays actually produced. Dr. Ballet describes the project in an introduction.

The plays which make up this collection are two related one-act plays, The Space Fan and The Master (titled together American Power), by James Schevill; Ex-Miss Cooper Queen on a Set of Pills by Megan Terry; A Bad Play for an Old Lady by Elizabeth Johnson; and And Things That Go Bump in the Night by Terrence McNally. Each playwright provides a discussion of his work, and production data are given. All except one of the plays were produced at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. In addition, one of them, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, has been given on Broadway.

Just as the experimental productions helped the playwrights evaluate their work, publication of the plays will, it is hoped, contribute further to the critical process by giving the plays the benefits of wider audiences and broader appraisal.

Another collection of plays by writers associated with the program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research is available in a second volume.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1973. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This volume presents four plays by writers who have worked under the program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.) at the University of Minnesota, an experimental project which provides promising playwrights with the opportunity of working with cooperating theatres in the production of their plays. Arthur H. Ballet, the editor, is director of the

O.A.D.R.

The plays in this volume and the theatres which cooperated in their production are Boxes by Susan Yankowitz, Magic Theatre, Berkeley, California; Canvas by David Roszkowski, Scorpio Rising Theatre, Los Angeles; Bierce Takes on the Railroad! by Philip A. Bosakowski, Theatre III, College of Marin, Kentfield, California; and Chamber Piece by John O'Keefe, Magic Theatre, Berkeley, California.

In an introduction Professor Ballet discussed the program and accomplishments of the O. A.D.R., which was established with the aid of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. He writes: "It seemed obvious that no artist worked in more lonely isolation and needed more direct contact with the theatre than the playwright. Despite loud pronouncements . . . that theatres outside of New York were searching for new plays and writers, the evidence indicates that very few theatres really wanted to work with unknown but living playwrights. The O.A.D.R., in its small way, has tried to open a highway . . . between new, often untried writers and willing, even brave theatres.

As Speech and Drama (England) pointed out in a review of earlier volumes of the Playwrights for Tomorrow series: "Schemes like this one at Minnesota deserve the highest praise. On the evidence of these volumes, the executive committee which operates this venture is not attempting to impose any single imprint on its authors—a further example of the generosity of the patronage."

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1975. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This twelfth volume in the series of collections of plays by writers who have worked under the auspices of the Office for Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.) at the University of Minnesota contains four plays and an introduction by Arthur H. Ballet. The O.A.D.R., of which Professor Ballet is the director, is an experimental project which provides promising playwrights with the opportunity to work with cooperating theatres in the production of their plays.

The plays which make up this collection are The Root by McCarthy Coyle, Wilson by George Greanias, A Lean and Hungry Priest by Warren Kliewer, and A Bunch of the Gods Were Sitting Around One Day by James Spencer. The plays by Mr. Coyle and by Mr. Spencer were produced at the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco. Mr. Greanias's play was staged at the Alley Theatre in Houston, and Mr. Kliewer's was given, in an earlier version, at the Scorpio Rising Theatre, Los Angeles.

In his introduction Professor Ballet points out that works by playwrights in the O.A.D.R. program have been produced not only in cooperating theatres in the United States but in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and Canada as well. It grows increasingly difficult, he writes, to find playhouses willing to risk an "imperfect" new play and playwright or to challenge their audiences to dare explore unknown dramatic and theatrical territory. "More dangerous still," he comments, "has been the tendency for some directors to make theatre their own, highly personal art. Many important, and many more unimportant, theatres have become showcases for artistic directors who impose their will on all work, old or new."

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1975. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Four plays by writers who have worked under the auspices of the Office for Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.) at the University of Minnesota are published in this volume, the thirteenth in the series of such collections. The O.A.D.R. program, which is directed by Arthur H.. Ballet, the series editor, provides an opportunity for promising playwrights to work with cooperating theatres in the production of their plays.

The plays in this volume are The Tunes of Chicken Little by Robert Gordon, The Inheritance by Ernest A. Joselovitz, Blessing by Joseph Landon, and The Kramer by Mark Medoff. Three of the plays—those by Robert Gordon, Joseph Landon, and Mark Medoff—were produced by the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco. The play by Mr. Joselovitz was presented by the University of Minnesota Theatre in Minneapolis.

In his introduction Mr. Ballet comments on the achievements and problems of the O.A.D.R. program. He reports that since the program began it had had about one hundred plays produced in some sixty theatres, not only in the United States but also in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and Canada. However, he writes, it became increasingly difficult to find playhouses willing to risk the challenge of new plays and playwrights. "More dangerous still," he writes, "has been the tendency for some directors to make theatre their own, highly personal art. Because so many of these directors only like what they know, and they don't know what to make of new work at all, they cannot truly judge and anticipate as a stage piece anything beyond their immediate ken. The rejections are cavalier and unthinking. The directors' lament that there are no new, exciting playwrights must be answered with the accusation that there really are damned few new, exciting, perceptive directors."

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is the second volume of a collection of plays by writers who have participated in an experimental program at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the Office for Advanced Drama Research, of which Arthur H. Ballet is the director. Three young playwrights, Maria Irene Fornes, Nick Bortez, and Lee H. Kalcheim, are represented in the collection with two one-act plays and two three-act plays.

Under the program, which is described by Dr. Ballet in his introduction, promising young playwrights are given assistance in developing their talents. Among other opportunities, they are offered the chance to have their plays actually produced.

The plays in this volume are Tango Palace and The Successful Life of Three: A Skit for Vaudeville,two one-act plays by Maria Irene Fornes; Shelter Area, a three-act play by Nick Boretz; and The Boy Who Came to Leave,a three-act play by Lee H. Kalcheim. In addition to the scripts, each playwright provides a discussion of his work in a preface. Production data for each play are given also.

Both of the plays by Miss Fornes were produced at the Firehouse Theatre in Minneapolis, and Tango Palace also was given at the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco. Shelter Area was presented in the Playwrights' Premiere Season at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Kalcheim's play was given at the Theatre in the Round, Minneapolis.

The plays in this volume and in Volume 1 of the collection range widely in theme and subject matter but they share a common trait - each represents a new and exciting voice in the American theatre.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Five writers are represented in this third volume of a series of collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in an experimental program conducted at the University of Minnesota by the Office for Advanced Drama Research. Dr. Arthur H. Ballet, editor of the series, is the director of the program. The plays in this volume are Five Easy Payments by John Lewin, Where Is de Queen? by Jean-Claude van Itallie, The Great Git-Away by Romeo Muller, With Malice Aforethought by John Stranack, and I, Elizabeth Otis, Being of Sound Mind by Philip Barber.

As Dr. Ballet explains in his introduction, the program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research provides a testing ground for promising playwrights by giving them a chance to have their plays actually produced. Publication of the plays makes them available to larger audiences and to further critical appraisal.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is the fourth in a series of volumes which offer collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in an experimental program conducted at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the Office of Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.). Dr. Arthur H. Ballet, editor of the series, is the director of the O.A.D.R.

This volume contains three full-length plays and one short play. They are The World Tipped Over, and Laying on Its Side (one act) by Mary Feldhaus-Weber, Visions of Sugar Plums by Barry Pritchard, The Strangler by Arnold Powell, and The Long War by Kevin O' Morrison. Mary Feldhaus-Weber is a St. Paul poet who has chosen to work in the theatre. Mr. Pritchard, a former playwright in residence at Theatre St. Paul, now writes for television and films in Hollywood. Mr. Powell is a teacher and theatre director at Birmingham-Southern College in Atlanta, and Mr. O'Morrison pursues an acting career in the Broadway theatre.

As Dr. Ballet explains in his introduction, the program of the O.A.D.R. is designed to give promising playwrights a testing ground for their ideas, skills, and talents by providing them with a chance to have their plays actually produced and, whenever possible, the opportunity of working with the producing groups. He points out that a number of the writers associated with the O.A.D.R. have subsequently moved into the mainstream of contemporary American theatre. Publication of the plays will, it is hoped, bring them to the attention of larger audiences and stimulate further critical appraisal.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is the fifth volume in a continuing series of collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in an experimental program conducted at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the Office of Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.). Dr. Arthur H. Ballet, editor of the series, is the director of the O.A.D.R.

The plays published here are Fair Beckoning One by Sarah Monson Koebnick and The New Chautauqua by Frederick Gaines. In an introduction Dr. Ballet comments briefly on the work of the playwrights included in this volume. Of Mrs. Koebnick and her play, Fair Beckoning One,he writes: "Without intending or implying condescension, it is quite safe to say that Sarah Koebnick is the rarest of all theatre birds: a primitive who is both a skilled writer and a keen observer. Her tradition is not modern, unless Ibsen is still considered a modernist, but her awareness and her ability to create touching characters and situations are qualities seldom evident in what comes into our office. Her play, Fair Beckoning One, is about a century away from the work of a Gaines or a Sainer, but her compassion is very 'with it.'"

Of Mr. Gaines and The New Chautauqua he writes: "A graduate-student enterprise, the AnyPlace Theatre, in the summer of 1968 turned Minnesota into a commedia dell'arte territory by carrying plays to the people in the streets. It was, by all measures, enormously successful, and it can be most proud that it presented works of two new writers, with the aid of the O.A.D.R. Fred Gaines is himself a graduate student and an exciting prolific new writer in the theatre. The New Chautauqua is one of his best works (and perhaps one of the best pieces O.A.D.R. has worked with): part commedia, part protest, part entertainment, part commitment, and part sheer, marvelous theatre."

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Three plays are published in this sixth volume of a series of collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in an experimental program conducted by the Office for Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.), University of Minnesota. Dr. Arthur H. Ballet, editor of the series, is the director of the program.

The plays in this volume are The Thing Itself by Arthur Sainer, The Marriage Test by Jonathan Gillman, and The End of the World; or, Fragments from a Work in Progress by Keith Neilson. In an introduction Dr. Ballet briefly describes the O.A.D.R. program and comments on the three plays.

Of Mr. Sainer and his play Dr. Ballet writes: "Arthur Sainer represents a new wave in theatrical writing, the semi-improvisational piece which really takes on life only in production, but which also speaks with a voice as old and honorable as theatre itself. The Firehouse Theatre, with its unique and skillful dedication to innovative theatre, brought The Things Itself to exciting production for enthusiastic audiences." Jonathan Gillman's The Marriage Test is, he writes, "a rare and sparkling work for the stage: a classic farce." On the third play and its author he comments: "The End of the World by Keith Neilson was the first play provided with facilities under the O.A.D.R. outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in an attempt to see if the program could work at long distance as well as it has at home. The play, the playwright, and the O.A.D.R. were blessed with a wonderful company, theatre, and audience at the Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, and above all with a dedicated and talented director in Brooks Jones. Neilson is a continuous creator in theatre."

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1971. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is the seventh volume in the series Playwrights for Tomorrow,which makes available collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in the program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research (O.A.D.R.) at the University of Minnesota. Arthur H. Ballet, the series editor, is the director of the O.A.D.R. Under the program of the O.A.D.R., promising playwrights are awarded grants and given the opportunity of having their plays produced by college, community, or experimental theatre groups.

In his introduction to this volume Professor Ballet comments on the experience and progress of the O.A.D.R. program. He points out that the playwrights included here represent the first full year of O.A.D.R. work with the theatres in various parts of the country. Previously the productions of the plays under the O.A.D.R. program had been limited to theatrical groups in or near Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The plays in this volume are Grace and George and God by Alexander Hierholzer, Assassin! by David Ball, Freddie the Pigeon by Seymour Leichman, Rags by Nancy Walter, The Orientals by Stephen Grecco, and Drive-In by David Kranes. Six delightful sketches by Mr. Leichman illustrate his play. Details about the initial productions of the plays and sidelights about the authors and their work are given by Professor Ballet in his introduction.

The locales for the premieres of these plays included Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Part, where two of the plays were given; the Firehouse Theatre in Minneapolis; Yale University's Drama School; the Theatre in the Round, Minneapolis; and the theatre at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1972. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Three playwrights are represented in this, the eighth volume of the continuing series Playwrights for Tomorrow, which makes available the work of playwrights who have been sponsored by the University of Minnesota Office for Advanced Drama Research. Under the program of the O.A.D.R., which is aided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, writers are given the opportunity to work on their scripts and have their plays produced by cooperating theater companies. The program is directed by Arthur H. Ballet, the series editor.

The three plays in this volume are A Gun Play by Yale M. Udoff, Anniversary on Weedy Hill by Allen Joseph, and The Nihilist by William N. Monson. Professor Ballet provides an introduction in which he explains the purpose and scope of the O.A.D.R. program, recounts some of its history and accomplishments, and tells a little about the O.A.D.R. productions of each of the plays included here.

A Gun Play was produced by the Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Connecticut, under the direction of Paul Weidner. Later it had an off-Broadway run in New York City, staged by commercial producers. The author, Yale Udoff, is a professional writer primarily involved in the mass media.

Anniversary on Weedy Hill was produced by Theatre West, a professional company in West Hollywood, California. Allen Joseph, the author, a professional actor in film and television, turned to playwriting in the midst of a well-established career in the theater.

The Nihilist was the second play of the O.A.D.R. offered through the facilities of the University of California at Davis Theatre under the direction of Alfred Rossi. William Monson, the playwright, is from the world of academe.

Playwrights for Tomorrow was first published in 1972. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is the ninth volume in the continuing series Playwrights for Tomorrow,which makes available collections of plays by dramatists who have participated in the program of the Office for Advanced Drama Research at the University of Minnesota. Arthur H. Ballet, the series editor, is the director of the program.

Professor Ballet writes an introduction to the volume, sketching a history of the O.A.D.R. program, telling about some of its accomplishments and programs, and giving information about the playwrights and productions of the plays included here. He explains: "The O.A.D.R. was established in 1963 at the University of Minnesota, with financial aid from the Rockefeller Foundation, to provide an opportunity for playwrights seeking to try fresh paths, an opportunity to have their work performed without the pressures endemic to the commercial theatre."

The plays in this volume are Encore by David Korr, Madam Popov by Gladden Schrock, Children of the Kingdom by The Company Theatre Ensemble with script by Don Keith Opper, and Psalms of Two Davids by Joel Schwartz. Encore and Madam Popov were presented, in separate productions, at the Other Place Theatre of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Children of the Kingdom was presented by The Company Theatre in Los Angeles. Psalms of Two Davids was produced at the College of Marin in California under the direction of James Dunn. Two of the plays—Children of the Kingdom and Psalms of Two Davids —are full-length and the other two are one-act plays.

In recent years the travel industry has promoted trips to cultural landscapes that contain great historical and symbolic landmarks, and Latin American towns and cities are anything but isolated from this trend. Many historic city centers in Latin America have been preserved intact from the colonial era and today may serve institutional, commercial, or residential needs. Now economic forces from outside the region have created a demand for the preservation of historically "authentic" districts.

This book explores how heritage tourism and globalization are reshaping the Latin American centro histórico, analyzing the transformation of the urban core from town plaza to historic center in nine cities: Bogotá, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cartagena, Colombia; Cuenca, Ecuador; Havana, Cuba; Montevideo, Uruguay; Puebla, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Trinidad, Cuba. It tells how these pressures, combined with the advantage of a downtown location, have raised the potential of redeveloping these inner city areas but have also created the dilemma of how to restore and conserve them while responding to new economic imperatives.

In an eclectic and interdisciplinary study, Joseph Scarpaci documents changes in far-flung corners of the Latin American metropolis using a broad palette of tools: urban morphology profiles, an original land-use survey of 30,000 doorways in nine historic districts, numerous photographs, and a review of the political, economic, and globalizing forces at work in historic districts. He examines urban change as reflected in architectural styles, neighborhood growth and decline, real estate markets, and local politics in order to show the long reach of globalization and modernity.

Plazas and Barrios spans all of Spanish-speaking America to address the socio-political dimensions of urban change. It offers a means for understanding the tensions between the modern and traditional aspects of the built environment in each city and provides a key resource for geographers, urban planners, architectural historians, and all concerned with the implications of the emerging global economy.

In The Pleasure Marriage, Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the epic story of a romance that explores desire and the intolerance for interracial marriage in Moroccan society. Amir is a prosperous merchant based in Fez, where he has a wife and four children. On one of his annual business trips to Senegal, he enters into a “pleasure marriage”—a temporary union permitted by Islamic law—with the alluring Nabou. Overcome by her passion and sensuality, he falls in love, with repercussions for three generations scarred by racism, immigration, and deportation.
 
Nabou returns to Fez as Amir’s second wife, weathering the jealous cruelty of Lalla Fatma, his first partner. Isolated within her new home, Nabou gives birth to twin sons, one black and one white, who come of age on the opposite sides of racial, social, and political chasms and who chart vastly different courses. The Pleasure Marriage showcases Ben Jelloun’s mastery of metaphor and lyrical narrative as he continues to take us into the worlds of Moroccan culture through his exquisite language and literary genius.
 

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices?

Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerless¡ness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.

 

In The Pleasures of Exile, as in his other works, George Lamming embraces the intricate issues of colonization and decolonization with a canny combination of playfulness and seriousness, irony and commitment. “[It] is a reciprocal process,” Lamming observes, “to be a colonial is to be a man in a certain relation; and this relation is an example of exile.”
 
Through a series of interrelated essays, The Pleasures of Exile explores the cultural politics and relationships created in the crucible of colonization. Drawing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins, as well as his own fiction and poetry, Lamming deftly locates the reader in a specific intellectual and cultural domain while conjuring a rich and varied spectrum of physical, intellectual, psychological, and cultural responses to colonialism. “My subject,” he writes, “is the migration of the West Indian writer, as colonial and exile, from his native kingdom, once inhabited by Caliban, to the tempestuous island of Prospero’s and his language. This book is a report on one man’s way of seeing.”
 

A Plot of Her Own presents compelling new readings of major texts in the Russian literary canon, all of which are readily available in translation. The female protagonists in the works examined are inextricably linked with the fundamental issues raised by the novels they inform; the interpretations offered strive not to be reductive or doctrinaire, not to be imposed from the outside but to arise from the texts themselves and the historical circumstances in which they were written. Authors discussed include Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov, and the novels considered range from Fathers and Children to Zamyatin's anti-Utopian We. Throughout, the contributors new visions expand our understanding of the words and reveal new significance in them.

In Ennead II.4 Plotinus investigates the question of what underlies the forms that constitute the contents of our minds and senses. Aristotle had called this substrate “matter,” and Stoic philosophers followed suit. With a critical review of their notions, and reference to Plato’s so-called Receptacle, Plotinus develops an account of matter that makes it a supremely negative entity. How he describes the indescribable, and how he justifies incorporeal matter’s indispensability to bodies, are highlights of this tenaciously argued essay.

 

A. A. Long translates and interprets Plotinus’ treatise on the matter that underlies all physical and intelligible beings. With a wide-ranging introduction and probing analysis of details, he explains the intricate structure of the text. The book will appeal to everyone interested in the history of Platonism and ancient Greek theories of the world’s ultimate principles.

The term dunamis (potentiality) entered into the philosophical vocabulary with Plato, but it was with Aristotle that it acquired, together with energeia (actuality), the strong technical meaning that the two terms have maintained, with variations, throughout subsequent philosophical tradition. 

 

The significance of the notions of actuality and potentiality in Plotinus’ thought can hardly be overstated. Throughout the Enneads, they are crucial to understanding the specific causality of intelligible realities and the relation of participation between intelligible and sensible realms. 

 

In Ennead II.5, Plotinus for the first time provides a systematic clarification of his peculiar use of these terms, through a sustained revision of Aristotle’s own elaboration of the topic and of his terminology. The treatise discusses the different meanings of potentiality and actuality as well as the way each of them applies or does not apply to the sensible realm, to the intelligible realm, and to matter. 

 

While the structure of the text unfolds in a coherent and cohesive manner, Plotinus’ writing in this treatise is dense and at times dry in its technicality. The detailed commentary guides the reader step by step, making an otherwise particularly difficult text accessible.